Korn has been on their world tour for See You On The Other Side since the end of February and the boys finally made it to New Jersey on March 28th. Bringing 10 Years and Mudvayne along, Korn put on a (suprise!) hell of a show. To my suprise, there were a ton of seats open on the top level, might have held another 1000 people pretty easily (really big pit at this show, the width of a hockey rink).

I didn’t see 10 Years, but got in in time to see Mudvayne (good seats too, 11th row, just left of center. Next time I’m going to try for the side of the stage to get really close to the stage). Mudvayne is really good live, I’m just not really into them. Simple set for them, the played for a good 45 minutes. Most notably is their incredible singer who has an insane vocal range. He doesn’t move around all that much, but he can switch from a growl, to a scream, to a soothing sing at an alarming rate. His voice was all over the place for their set, but he was always clear and in control. Worst part was the 2-3 strobe lights that they had pointed out toward the audience and after awhile it got really irritating to look at the stage. Bright white lights going crazy right at you for like a half an hour gets tiring.

Korn didn’t have that problem though. They had what looked like a simple stage, but it was pretty amazing looking back on it. The show started with It’s On! by playing the beginning sample(?) over and over while they had the top lights above the stage glowing red. That served as an intro before the curtain parted to reveal Dave as he starts drumming away. Rest of the band comes on and the show just takes off. First 2-3 songs were old school as they dug into the first album with Clown…through out the show you could see the levels of Korn fans, people that knew just the singles, the people that knew all of the songs (a lot of songs you could here the crowd singing along easily) and the people that didn’t like the new album. It was a wild show that really just got better as it went on….and it went on! Korn played for at least an hour and a half, I think closer to an hour 45. They did a huge amount of songs.

After those 3 classics, Coming Undone started and the curtain fell down revealing a back up band. A guitarist (if I’m right it’s Rob whos been a friend of the band for awhile and is filling in Heads position) , a guy on a synth/piano thing, and 2 guys in a big drum kit all the way on the right side of the stage. With the new sounds of the new album, they needed back up to play some of the other parts…and it worked really well. The 5 tracks off of the new album (Coming Undone, Liar, Tearjerker, Twisted Transistor and Hypocrits) sounded terrific. The backup members were wearing maskes that fit the animal theme of the albums cover. The biggest problem with this, is that from my perspective, it was really weird seeing that many people on stage for Korn (and Head missing felt weird obviously), there was a hint of Slipknot there. Plus, the second drum set was just to the right of David, and it was fucking huge. So much so that it usually drew your eye away from the rest of the stage.

Aside from those small things, Korn just straight up rocked the place. Really wide selection of songs, but there was a definate lack of songs from Mirror…no Yall Want a Single, Right Now or Did My Time (which I really wanted to hear) and no cover songs either. One is the shit live, I really missed that one. The medley they played was made up of 6 songs or so and I’ve heard them “mix” them better before, sometimes the flow felt off. But as a whole, they were really on. Best part was when Jon was standing in front of Davids kit and Munk and Fieldy closed in so they were just a few feet from each other during Blind. They were just fucking wailing and headbanging as hard as possible doing the infamous Korn “bop”. Long hair whipping, lights going crazy, crowd feeling every bit of it. If I had a picture of it, I’d make a poster out of it.

The production for this show was huge. The entire area behind them was a huge screen that they projected stuff on to. Each song had a different background to it, with crazy animations and a light show that really needs to be seen to be believed. There must have been 50 lights in the main grid above the stage pointed toward the audince alone. I really can’t describe what it was like that well. You never saw the same thing twice and it was timed to the second. Jon changed costumes about 3 times (fieldy changed too) with short little interludes between some songs. It was like the show was broken into 3 acts (it’s amazing how fast they changed too). Speaking of Jon, he was flawless that night. His voice was perfect and he just nailed everything perfectly. Tearjerker was pretty cool to see live, he just goes out there and sings from the heart with every song. Oh shit, Munky had a killer solo too. He cruised the stage and played for a good 5 minutes, it was bad ass to witness. A little bit more crowd interaction in the whole show than I’ve seen before too.

The encore was sick as well, leading to the final song…Blind. That might have been the song of the show right there. Always an intense song live, the place just went nuts, it was like entire show was rolled into this last insane song the last bit of energy squeezed out of the building. I got the intro on my cell phone and despite the shit quality, I think I’ve watched it 50 times since. There were so many times where Korn just rocked everyones face off. Blind obviously and Freak On A Leash was unreal. Sick spot lights to mimic the video and when Jon started scatting the lighting complete changed and highlighted him and then just pandamonium as the lights went nuts again. 3 days later and I still can’t get over how fucking sick they made the show. I’d totally buy a DVD of this show. I hope they come out with a new DVD soon, it’s been 3 full albums since the last one. I’ve heard that a “rarites” album is going to be released this summer.

Finally, other highlights include the fight that broke out on the left side during the beginning of Shoots and Ladders and the 40 something year old dude getting busted banging a 16 year old drunk girl in the bathroom. Who found ’em? From what I heard, the girls dad. Oh man.

Right now Korn has about 4 shows left on this US tour before they blast off to Europe to raise hell for another 15 shows or so. I think they are going to do another leg in the US for the summer….I’m totally going again. Check Myspace for a few pictures.